The Liberty Movie Theater located in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, was one of those grande dame movie palaces built back in the day when glamorous, glorious, decadence meant plush red velvet seats, thick red carpeting and the most ornate of architectural gems hung, projected, and adorned were all waiting for the audiences viewing pleasures. The Liberty Theater in its day had not one but three balconies, reaching into the dark recesses of a gothic castle, with hidden entrances to private box seating and archways leading to hallways highlighted with chandeliers bouncing with the colors of wither a pale red or mush violet bulb leading to doorways and stairwells where only your wildest dreams might find refuge. back in the day the Liberty Theater was an opulence adventure. But in Pittsburgh back in the late 50’s and early 60’s movie theaters began to change, and budgets were less kind to the palaces of the big studios, and soon if a theater like the Liberty still managed to survive its interiors began to decline, and instead of glitz and bling, rust, ruin and once was remained. Top rate movies no longer found their way to these large cavernous museum pieces, but the best scary movies around did find a nice resting place, and the Liberty Theater welcomed them with open arms.
My father loved horror movies, and ignoring the warning by my mother that my sister and I would surely have nightmares if we went to see them, my father would take us to each and every ‘flying saucer”, creature feature, and ghost story that the Liberty Theater would screen. I remember standing outside the dark and dingy brick building, still with its witches peaks in place and my father would point saying, maybe Dracula was here tonight. Once we got inside the grand old palace, brought our popcorn and soda dimly lit in soft purples and reds, my father would ask us if we had to pee, (he reminded us it might be safer to do so as ghosts re always arriving late to the movies), and told us that you never know what might be lurking in the hallway later on. We used the restrooms immediately and then found out seats. My father told us the safest place to sit while watching am horror movie was the middle row and the middle three seats. Ghost, and creatures like to pick off the audience members who sit at the end and who fall asleep. There was one rule however that my sister and I had and that was my father sit in the middle with each of his strong and protective arms either around our shoulders or close enough to grab. Right before the movie would start, my father would turn his head and pretend to look up at then highest balcony, in the corner of the balcony to be exact. My sister and and I would fall for the same schtick time after time asking him what he was looking at only to have him say, I was just wondering if any THING was looking at us.
We saw all of Vincent Price’s movies, two of the best for me were 13 Ghosts and The House on the Haunted Hill. True to form the black and white images and the extra heavy organ and tortured woman’ voice singing in high soprano falsetto for background terror, made the movie even more terrifying. But there were two things about Vincent Price movies, the first was that it ended with the creature or ghosts destroyed, which was good news, but somehow right before the credits and the barely working exit lights in the Liberty Theater came on, there would always be one character whose face would appear, mostly it was a male and he would say, “IS IT REALLY THE END”, causing a chill so sever to claim my sister’s and my bodies that we would race up the aisle to the safety of the lobby. Thursday, we are told that James Comey is to speak to the Senate in a public hearing. As anything Trump has felt to me like a Vincent Price movie, I have to ask, first of all will the monsters, creatures, ghosts find their demise, or on Thursday evening will some long drawn Republican treasonous politician’s face find its way on the TV screen asking: “IS IT REALLY THE END” The thought still scares me!
